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Abducted
"Abducted" is the 1st segment in the 18th episode of the first season of Invader Zim. It first premiered on April 12, 2002, on Nickelodeon. Plot Summary Zim is contacting the Almighty Tallest, trying to explain to them how humans are dumb and tall, when the doorbell rings and his transmission is interrupted, Zim sends GIR to see who is at the door before continuing talking to the Tallest while GIR lets in two individuals who claim to be their "new neighbours." When the Zim's transmission with his leaders is cut short, he goes up to investigate and meets the strangers in his living room who claim to be humans, but Zim isn't fooled by their disguises, for they are even worse than his. He attempts to tell them that their spaceship is jamming his signal; they respond by putting GIR and Zim in a sack and taking them to their spaceship. However, these new aliens quickly turn out to be spectacularly stupid. After they think he's human even after he took of his disguise and orders GIR to do the same and still plan to "fuse" Zim to another human (which is really taping a gopher to his head), Zim easily escapes the aliens and explores their ship (which is disguised as a whale). He gets nowhere, however, until he finds another captured being on the ship. The odd, blob-like being tells Zim how all of the other organisms escaped: through a duct in the ceiling. Having no useful appendages, the blob himself is unable to escape, so he tearfully asks Zim if he would help him... by this time, however, the Irken has already jumped up through the duct, leaving the little alien to his fate. Zim finally finds the escape pod room, calls for GIR, and the two of them escape, with minimal efforts made by the two aliens to hinder their progress (they simply stand at the open doorway to the pod bay and claw at the air halfheartedly). Zim and GIR make it to their front yard in the escape pod with the neighbors simply shrug off seeing them out of their disguises. The two aliens meanwhile start bickering and forget about their escapees, one decides to fuse "humans" in actuality several pieces of metal to the Blob Creature while the other starts searching for their next specimen; the Earth weasel. Back in his base, Zim gets in contact with the Tallest and apologizes for the interruption and also reveals to them that there is a species even dumber than humans, Purple predictably asked about their height. Meanwhile Dib and Gaz stand outside in front of their house, seeing as the ship flies over it, disguised as a giant baby, A beam of green light envelopes Dib and disappears. Gaz stands there for a few seconds before walking away. Facts of Doom Cultural References * The aliens in this episode first appeared in Jhonen Vasquez's Squee! and a meanwhile segment of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac; both were just as incompetent. In addition, during the scene with the blob thing, you can see a piece of paper that says JTHM with a stick figure of him on the paper. *When Zim and GIR are trying to escape, the theme of Doctor Who can be heard. Trivia * The two aliens in this episode were never given names. However, based on the name tags worn with their human disguises, they are referred to as Fred and Mary or Blue and Green based on their eye colors. *This episode seems to have the only moment in which the Tallest are actually interested in something Zim is telling them. *Dib appears twice in this episode, but only has lines in the recording of the Skool when he was telling Zim that he knew was an alien. *This is also the only episode in the entire series in which Gaz appears but has no dialogue. She and Dib watch as the "cloaked" ship comes towards them and abducts her brother; unsurprisingly, she doesn't care and walks away. *As the camera pans to GIR after Zim tells him to "go answer the door", it can be seen that Tallest Red and Purple have switched places on the screen, and the image of Tallest Red is protruding off the screen. *It would seem that, although "Fred" and "Mary" walked in Invader Zim, they never actually used their legs in Squee! and JTHM. They used floating chairs to move around. *The two aliens have Cockney British accents. *The can that the gopher was in said "Can O' Human". *By the end of the episode, Zim has a slightly higher respect for the human race. Changes and Cuts * According to Jhonen Vasquez and Steve Ressel in the episode's DVD commentary, the crew originally sought to hire Monty Python members John Cleese and Eric Idle to voice the Abductors Mary and Fred. After Cleese declined the offer, they sought Terry Jones to participate along Idle, but ultimately, neither Idle nor Jones contributed because they were out of the United States when this episode was in production. Instead, the two aliens ended up being voiced by Paul Greenberg and writer Eric Trueheart. *The legless neighbor seen in "Germs" was in the animatics while in the episode the man that has Zim's wires in his house takes his place. *Much of Zim's attempt to escape from the ship was cut; supposedly, there were at least ten minutes of footage consisting of him wandering lost that was cut for time. *The aforementioned deleted footage reveals that PAK legs will activate on their own to preserve the life of their host. During the footage, Zim momentarily goes unconscious when he falls through fire - but he is saved from the fall when his PAK legs activate and catch onto a ledge, carrying him to steady ground and dropping him there. He awakens again within seconds. Things You Might Have Missed *Watch carefully, and you can see that Fred and Mary ejected the blob alien from the tube. Inconsistencies and Animation Errors *When GIR is going up to see through the door, the door lock area is missing. *One of the abductors has teeth on his costume which keep appearing and disappearing. *When the Blob is telling Zim where the escape hatch is and points to it, look at the blob and you'll see that its mouth stopped moving even though it's still talking. *When the aliens are about to stuff Zim in their sack, his leggings are pink and striped (or segmented) rather than their normal solid black. This error also occurred in "The Nightmare Begins" and "Dibship Rising". *When showing Zim the video of himself, it ends with Zim pointing at his neck, and it stays that way for the next two scenes where you can see the screen. However, when they are about to begin the "Fusing", you can clearly see Zim's screen image pointing at his eye. It stays this way for the next 2 scenes, then he goes back to pointing at his neck. *The voice actors for the Abductors are incorrectly credited as being done by Brian George and Jim Wise. The two were voiced by Paul Greenberg and Eric Trueheart, though George and Wise did do recordings intended to replace them for the use in the final episode. The voice recordings were accidentally mixed up. See also *Abducted (Transcript) *Abducted Screenshots References External links *http://www.tv.com/invader-zim/abducted/episode/114858/summary.html es:Raptado Category:Season 1 Category:Episodes Category:Altered Episodes Category:Screenshots